Fun and Games
by Airstream Raven
Summary: A story of the Hunger Games told from the POV of a male tribute. Mainly these are my OCs, but the staples of the Hunger Games ceremonies, like C Flickerman, C Templesmith, and Pres. Snow will make appearances. Rated T for being THG-related. So it goes.
1. Chapter 1

**The Reaping **

It always begins with a Reaping.  
>That's how I count the years. That's the way I age. I am not fifteen years old. I am fifteen Reapings old.<br>My brother was chosen nine Reapings ago.  
>It has been seven Reapings since I last smiled properly. That sounds a bit drastic, but it's pretty much the truth. I haven't cracked a real, decent smile since I was eight Reapings old. When the occasion calls for it I sometimes bare my teeth. But not so much smile. My life in District Five hasn't given me much to smile about.<br>My life in District Five is defined by the Hunger Games. My family supplies the genes for the Capitol's muttations that they use to torment tributes. It's a hateful job, and it barely feeds us anyway, and the Capitol men who come by my father's lab for his latest experiment know exactly what the Hunger Games mean to us. They love to remind us that it was genes from our labs which they engineered the flying mutts that killed my brother with. I've almost grown deaf to it. It's always the same men, every time.  
>I help my father in his lab. It's only the two of us, really, as my mother is gone from the house much of the time. My father is a skilled geneticist, and under different circumstances would love his work. He did before Theo got Reaped. Almost all of his passion for DNA died with my brother.<br>Today I'm in the lab with my father, sullenly running the centrifuge and ferrying test tubes to and from his workplace. I move slowly, willing time to stop moving so fast and postpone the Reaping indefinitely. If there's one thing I fear, it's lining up with the other boys behind our partition ropes and crossing my fingers so hard they might break, or biting my cheek until it almost bleeds, or digging my fingernails into my thigh to keep my name from being called. One Reaping I ripped a pair of pants that way, by digging my fingernails into my thigh. Tore a chunk right off of my right pocket. That was the Reaping they called the guy next to me, and when he moved I thought I'd moved and misheard and they'd called me, but they didn't, so he went up and got a handshake and a death sentence and I got a handful of corduroy and another Reaping to look forward to.  
>I move slowly so that time will too, but the hour of the Reaping shows up way too fast and we have to close shop. And shuffle off to the Justice Building, where two people die each Reaping.<br>My father and mother meet up and walk with me, each with a hand on my shoulder. I'm grateful for their hands. It's comforting all around. This way none of us loses touch with the other.  
>I still feel the imprint of my parents' hands on my shoulders as I line up in the middle of the pool of kids with the other fifteens. I don't look at anyone, instead staring at a chair leg belonging to the escort for District Five. He is an effeminate, fat schmuck named Waldo Tart, and he has blue fingers and green eyebrows. He's also got great glittering diamonds stuffed up his nose, and he's wearing a dubiously frilly suit. I sort of hate him. But at least he treats the Hunger Games with the proper respect. He reads off the names in an especial funeral tone, even though his normal voice is high and piping.<br>Five's mentors arrive and take their seats. These are two from a couple of years ago each, Nero Michaelmas and Lidia Small. Nero is tall and lithe and surprisingly affable. A people person. He's also a ruthless tactician. Lidia is small like her name and wiry, and she hates everybody. You can only get a few words out of her mouth at one time. I don't know how she is with her tributes.  
>Our distinguished mayor rises and blathers on about How We Got Here, or the Illustrious History of Panem, with all the capital letters pronounced. He explains the origin of the Hunger Games, and the Dark Days and the Rebellion and the Capitol coming down on the districts like a ton of bricks and forcing us to give up our children. He tells of the Treaty of Treason. He is the Capitol's puppet.<br>Waldo Tart oozes daintily over to the blasted glass balls which hold our names. "Let's start with girls," he trills, and plunges his hand into the sea of slips. He draws one out with especial bravado, and reads in a voice like an undertaker, "Eleanor Faust." The name echoes around the crowd and a girl with long black hair and deep black eyes strides to the stage. Her brows are knitted together fiercely, and her fingers are clenching and unclenching. Her teeth are probably gritted.  
>Waldo Tart now oozes over to the boys' ball. He's beaming, because Eleanor Faust is pretty and since he's a sick Capitol man, he likes pretty tributes. He actually dawdles over the boys' ball, watching Eleanor as she stares straight ahead with her arms stiff by her sides, her hair channeling her emotions and almost standing on end. Waldo Tart snaps himself out of it and time slows down (now, of all times, when it could have had the decency to do so earlier!) as his frilly arm descends into the glass orb and plucks a slip out from the grasping puddle of paper inside. He unfolds it with pomp and reads in his best doom voice: "Dion Longfellow."<br>"'Dion Longfellow.'"  
>Dion Longfellow.<br>That is me.  
>I can't breathe anymore. I can't move, either, or rather I think I can't since I actually am, I didn't know I had this instinct, why am I moving to the stage they must have misread I've misheard before, it wasn't me then, it can't be me now, why are my legs taking me up to the stage and why is my name Dion Longfellow and I'm mounting the stairs and standing next to Eleanor Faust.<br>I don't hear a word of the mandatory reading of the Treaty of Treason. I never have, really, but now I don't even hear the mayor reading. All I hear is "Dion Longfellow. Dion Longfellow. Dion Longfellow" in my head. I curse my name, and I want to weep. I won't weep. I want to weep.  
>Dion Longfellow. Dion Longfellow.<br>Eleanor Faust shakes my hand, and my chant has suddenly has four more words to it.  
>Dion Longfellow is going to die. Dion Longfellow is going to die.<p> 


	2. Chapter 2

**Departure**

Dion Longfellow is going to die.  
>I wish I'd shut up already.<br>Dion Longfellow is going to die. Dion Longfellow is going to die.  
>I wish I'd stop referring to myself in the third person.<br>I wish I'd stop murmuring my cursed name to myself. It makes me look loony.  
>Theo Longfellow is dead. Dion Longfellow is going to die.<br>I'm sitting on the couch in the Justice building, tearing chunks out of the fabric with my anguished fingers, burning holes in the carpet with my aching eyes, and searing my lips with unwanted words (Theo Longfellow is dead, Dion Longfellow is going to die. Die, die, dead, die. Theo. Dion. Die.)  
>Dion Longfellow is going to die?<br>My parents enter and I rise, my fingers badly wanting to take a portion of the couch with me. I go straight into their arms and give a strangled sob into the shoulder of my mother's dress as my father strokes my hair. Something he never really does.  
>Ok, fine, I'm done with my damned chant. I'm going to die, fine. Dammit.<br>"You're loved, Dion," says my mother softly. "We love you."  
>I think I choke out a reply, but I'm drowned out by my own memory of the screams we give as we recognize the mutts that killed my brother. I'm so scared that will happen to me.<br>My parents and I take up all the allotted time in each others' embraces, since no one else really wants to visit. Then Peacekeepers escort my parents away from me and I am hauled out to the train. Before my parents leave, my father turns back and says to me with a conflicting expression, "Remember, we probably built these mutts. You know their weaknesses." Then he's ushered out by disapproving Peacemakers.  
>I've been so caught up in my own doom that I'd forgotten that I had helped my father engineer many of the genes the Capitol required. Now, I remember how to hope.<p>

You know what they should always do? They should broadcast the tributes' reactions to the trains. Most of us have never seen one before. I know I haven't. So despite my dark thoughts and rising dread my mouth drops open as I watch the sleek train glide into the station. Eleanor Faust is just as transfixed. _We're going on that?_ We really are.  
>So instead of two tributes from Five crying or not crying, or acting stiff or elated for their opportunity, the media broadcasts two tributes who have never gone any faster than fifteen miles an hour at any point in their lives. I bet it throws off the program. I bet Eleanor and I are both just dying to try and take the train apart to see how it works, and to test out fuel mitosis. Or to redo the engine with DNA wiring.<br>Dying to. Going to die. Ugh, poor choice of words.  
>We board, Nero Michaelmas, Lidia Small, Waldo Tart, Eleanor Faust, and I. Our pictures are taken. Our movements are captured on film.<br>Our emotions are completely masked.

I'm led to my cabin by a white-suited Avox, who I don't even glance back at. Avoxes make me very nervous. A schoolteacher of mine was once a bit too wordy, and tried to sow dissent among her impressionable year-twos, and she was taken away. Later, our puppet mayor announced that she had become an Avox and described the process and what would happen to anyone who wanted to talk overmuch. They showed a picture of her with dark smudges under her eyes and blood at the corner of her mouth as an extra warning. So Avoxes make me very, very nervous. Another downside to being a tribute (other than the obvious one, I suppose)- I'll be surrounded by the silent servants for the rest of my exposition.  
>I'm left alone in my room. Finally. So I go straight to the window and lean my forehead up against it, and watch my life blur by as the train picks up speed.<p> 


	3. Chapter 3

**The Journey to the Capitol**

I'm not disturbed for quite some time aboard the Capitol's train. It pleases me to be left alone at this moment. I have thought about banging my head against the window but I decided it would be childish. Instead I settle for gritting my teeth and prowling around my cabin. It's very modern. All lines and contrasts. All white and grey and black, with some sunshine let in. Upon entering the slim mechanic door, which opens with a hiss, you see a sleek bed tucked up against the left wall. Across an expanse of pixellated carpet is a vast wardrobe, and the window where I've been sitting. Beneath that is a smallish table and two seats. On the wall adjacent to the table and chairs lies the fabled Contraption which orders your food for you. Directly ahead of the door lies the washroom, which is all curves and swooshes. The bathtub reaches to my hip and has an automatic sliding door which descends or rises to let you pass. The water from the shower is kept in by an opaque force-field. I know because in a fit of pique I turned on the shower full blast to see if I could get the floor wet, but I only activated the water-repelling field. I suppose in order to cause any damage to the washroom I'd have to tote the water by hand, but that requires effort and I don't really think that wetting the bathroom floor is an adequate way to revenge myself on the Capitol for Reaping me and my brother.  
>I continue my prowling, and I don't stop really for anything. I think it's been hours. I also think that if I'm left to my own devices I'll wear a groove in the train. I don't want to leave my cabin to go ask what's happening. I don't want to stay here uselessly, wondering what's happening.<br>I don't want to be here. I suppose it boils down to that.  
>Apparently my restless footsteps are too much for them Capitol softies, because Waldo Tart flounces into my room and startles me bodily out of my path.<br>"Quit your pacing and come with me!" he whistles. I would greatly like to deflate him but I follow him instead, because I think I may go mad in my room full of lines.  
>Of course, the whole train is lines. Lines are modern. Lines are vogue. Lines are desirable.<br>Lines like these remind me of all the straight pointy weapons utilized in past Games. Arrows, pointed at my heart. Spears thrust through my body. Lines of criss-crossing wire that won the games for a man from 3. Tendons that make up the wings of the mutts which killed my brother.  
>Rather than think on these lines, I concentrate on the stripes of Lidia Small's coat. And the way they shape her elbow. Very pointy.<br>Waldo Tart gives a very soft cough and daintily readjusts his diamond noseplugs.  
>"Dinner is served," he coos, and sits with great self-importance.<br>I'm still quite preoccupied with thoughts of my own demise that I sort of inhale my meal and pay little attention to it. I think there was a potato dish. Possibly also almonds. And something that glittered. Or maybe that was Waldo's nose. I can't be sure. I barely looked up from a spot just above my plate for the entire dinner.  
>I do pay attention during the recaps of the Reapings across the Districts. I note every tribute, and pin down who will most likely be a Career, and who is most likely going to snuff it as soon as they set foot in the arena.<br>District 1, they're Careers. They're tall and strong and determined. They ascend to the stage with blazing eyes.  
>District 2 produces two terrifying tributes who both stand at least six feet and seem to shake the stage as they climb the stairs.<br>The boy from District 3 is thin, the girl bespectacled. They are quite unremarkable. Blank, in fact.  
>District 4's girl is glorious. She has bright blonde hair and hazel eyes. Her nose is broken. She is tanned. The boy is a fisherman, with callouses. He looks too honest and good to be in the Games.<br>I watch Eleanor Faust ascend the stage and see sparks in her teeth from when she ground them. She is a Career. There's no doubt. I don't know what to think about myself. I don't underestimate myself, though. I'm clever. So is Eleanor. I think, for the first time, that between the two of us, Five might have a victor.  
>District 6 gives up a wiry young boy (he is twelve! I hate watching twelves compete in the Games) and a long girl with short hair. She cries. He doesn't.<br>Districts 7, 8, and 9 spit out identical reactions. All of their tributes are worried and scared.  
>District 10 offers up a boy who has a square face and large hands, and a girl with biceps. They're to be watched.<br>District 11's tributes have the biggest brown eyes I've ever seen on a person. The girl is tall and muscular, doubtless because she is some sort of laborer. The boy is overly wide-eyed and does his best to be innocent. It doesn't work. He looks like a brawler, but with huge eyes.  
>District 12 gives two tributes who haven't ever seen enough to eat. The girl almost swoons off the stage from shock and maybe even exhaustion. The boy catches her, but the gesture is rote. They both wear expressions of defeat.<br>I note my opponents' attributes, their characteristics; I guess at their strengths and weaknesses; I watch their emotions and compare them to my own.  
>I do not want their names.<p> 


	4. Chapter 4

**Arrival**

Nero Michaelmas and Lidia Small rise in unison and turn to Eleanor and me.  
>"Who is your greatest threat?" asks Michaelmas.<br>_We know who they are._ "Districts 1 and 2," says Eleanor. She sits tense next to me on the blood red couch. It's making me tense, too. "District 11's boy. The girl from 4. The rest most likely won't survive the initial bloodbath."  
>Lidia Small purses her lips but says nothing, instead looking to me.<br>"Eleanor Faust," I say.  
>Eleanor goes even more rigid beside me, Michaelmas stiffens, and Small gives a satisfied smirk.<br>"Why?" asks Small. Her voice is low and somewhat rough.  
>"Districts 1 and 2 are just a bunch of meat. They're still to be feared, but with a little stealth I can pick 'em off. I know I'm smarter than the other tributes named. There are the ones I won't have to worry about. And then there's Eleanor, who calculated all her potential threats immediately and accurately, who is top in our class, and who comes from a family who has tactician's genes in spades. She is also pretty, at least, and may benefit from sponsors as a result. And anyone who goes to our school can tell you that she is good at manipulation and there is no evidence here that she won't utilize that skill now, when her very life depends upon it."<br>I stare straight at Eleanor's nose during my speech. As I pronounce the last word my gaze drops to the tops of my shoes.  
>"Well, that's a first," I hear Small murmur to Michaelmas. "Dion, look up," she orders, and I obey. "You know what this means, don't you?" Small gives another smirk.<br>I look up at my mentors and say nothing. Eleanor matches my movements, her dark eyes glittering.  
>"We are to ally with each other and hope one dies before the other has to kill them," she says.<br>Michaelmas nods and confirms my earlier thoughts. "Between the two of you, we have more than enough material to bring home a victor for Five." His face clouds. "Of course, there can be only one." His face now becomes thunderous. "We need you to keep each other alive until there's a one-hundred percent chance that one of you will come home. You have too much of a chance of winning to go separate ways and kill each other off as opponents proper. We want you to ally and remove all your competition and bring Five victory."  
>"If you end up in the final five or something and don't want to kill each other, one can jump off a cliff," says Small drily. Her mouth is bitter in its shape and I can tell the words are distasteful to her.<br>I look down at my shoes again, words forming in my mouth like stones. I breathe in deeply, once, twice, and roll the stones that are my words around my mouth before lifting my head (it must weigh a thousand pounds on my weary neck) and saying, "I will send Eleanor home. But if I die, it won't be because of a mutt, no matter how far I make it."  
>My stone-heavy words trip from my lips and clatter at the shoes of my mentor. I hear Eleanor take in a deep breath through her nose and say nothing.<br>"We've cleared that up, then," says Lidia Small.

After this sobering episode we all return to our quarters. Before I leave, Eleanor grabs my arm to stop me. Her breath catches in her throat. She opens her mouth to speak, but can't manage, so she closes it and fills her gaze with the words she can't say. She applies grateful pressure as her eyes shine: _Thank you for your life. Thank you for your life._  
>I nod slowly and she releases me, and I nearly set the carpet on fire from the friction of my speeding feet. I spend a great deal of time with my head propped up against the wall of my bedroom until Lidia Small comes to fetch me.<br>"We've arrived," she says. The train is slowing, and I ooze out of my compartment after Lidia to the window, where I'm almost blinded by the Capitol itself. The colors are extravagant and numerous, and unreal in their intensity. The buildings soar upwards to kiss the sky and the streets are straight and wide. They are pretty well clogged with citizens of the Capitol, who are beside themselves with excitement. I notice Eleanor, standing beside me, is scowling at them. We're just far away enough that they can't see her face, or mine, for that matter. It is blank. I have nothing to give them.  
>The Capitol's citizenry vanishes from view as we pull into the station. We are escorted off the train and into a gleaming white building, where we are immediately accosted by stylists' assistants.<br>I'm bustled off into a sweet-smelling room which is also very white and introduced to my prep team.  
>Limi is tall and thin, and she is made up to resemble a willow tree. Her hair looks like long willow branches with leaves growing upon them, and she has a few leaf barrettes tastefully placed at her temples.<br>Loran is highly androgynous. I couldn't actually tell whether Loran was a male or a female until he told me himself. He is slim and wavy and favors blues and greens, with heavy cerulean eye makeup and chartreuse lip color, and he carries himself like a lady, but bears some resemblance to a man.  
>Laidia is attired like a ... well, she reminds me of an ancient creature called an anglerfish, which lived in the deepest part of the ocean and lured its prey to it by dangling a bioluminescent appendage before it. My father once designed a mutt from it. Laidia isn't predatory like the fish, but she is dressed in a grey-green bodysuit adorned with white lights streaking up her arms and down her torso, and she is wearing a headdress which curves up from the center of her forehead and ends in a single bead of low-voltage light. It bobs whenever she moves.<br>Loran and Laidia strip me efficiently while Limi turns on a shower and pushes me in. She slings the curtain closed and presses a button, which causes me to become sand-blasted by beads of what I presume is body wash. It explodes in sweet-smelling bubbles upon contact with my skin. Next I am deluged in chilled water, then lukewarm, then chilled again, and finally I'm blown dry with a high-velocity fan. Loran draws me out and Laidia hands me a paper-thin robe, which I barely have time to shrug into before Limi seizes my face and rubs something yellow into my cheeks.  
>"This is to keep you from growing any facial hair while you're in the arena," she chirps, and gives my face a sharp pat. I scowl and think about baring my teeth, but Laidia steals my robe and Loran leads me into the center of the room, whereupon the three of them begin to circle me and mutter to themselves in a kind of shorthand. I stand stock-still and try to resist the urge to cover myself.<br>Loran gives a sharp command in stylist's shorthand and Laidia gives me my robe again, then swoops down on my wrist and leads me into another room after her colleagues. "You're going to look _excellent_ by the time we're finished with you!" she says excitedly to me. "You'll look like a real human being!"  
>I am, at this point, so cross that I could spit fire, and my movements are stiff as I'm led around a table in the center of the new room. Limi plucks my robe off my shoulders again and says, "Turn that frown upside down! No one wants a mean-looking tribute," at which I open my mouth to unleash a string of ear-blistering curses but I am prodded into a cylindrical chamber with small lights installed at intervals and a sound-proof door, so none of my words are of any use whatsoever.<br>By the time I'm finished with my prep team and deemed ready to meet my stylist (four hours later), I am six inches from total madness, and nearly rabid.  
>I've been abandoned in a dim room with vague furniture, and still totally furious I stand in the center where my prep team left me and fume. I'm handsome. I've been waxed, polished, washed, molded, tweezed, and scented. I've been made over to Beauty Base Three, then up to Four, then all the way down to One before being redone to Three. After which my team decided One was actually the best. My <em>nails<em> have been _painted_. Admittedly with a clear polish, but still. I am prepared eight ways to Sunday to either stun them at my unveiling or eat someone out of pure vexation.  
>A door opens at the far end of the dim room and the lights rise. They reveal a tall, wide lady dressed flamboyantly in hot pink, with bright yellow hair streaked through with red. She has gemstones over her eyelids, tattoos under her eyes, and glitter in her broad smile. Her lips are crimson. Her nails are, too.<br>"Hi, hon!" she shouts. "I'm Orlia Stock, your stylist! Now, what have we here?"


	5. Chapter 5

Orlia Stock gives me the impression of great insufferable personality countered by unimaginable skill. She is highly charismatic and disgustingly confident. I think that even in my heightened fury from my prep ordeals I could not make a dent in her.  
>"What have we here?" Orlia says again, and seizes my shoulder and spins me around. I pivot instinctually on my left foot and stagger to a halt when Orlia stops me by putting her hands squarely on my chest. She takes the lapels of my paper robe and gives a hearty yank, baring me to her jewel eyes. I'm still scowling, so Orlia reaches up and gives my cheek a sharp slap, saying, "Lighten up. I can't do anything with a tribute who frowns all the time."<br>"What if that's my iangle/i?" I snap, crossing my arms and deepening my scowl. "What if I'm supposed to come off as hostile and angry?"  
>"Then I can't do anything with you," says Orlia, cutting me short as she adds, "and while you have every reason to be hostile and angry you aren't, because that's not what your brother would have wanted."<br>It is almost like a physical blow when Orlia mentions my brother. I cross my arms even tighter, if possible, and am about to wither the hair from her head with my glare when she surprises me and throws my paper robe back on.  
>"Come on, love," Orlia says, and takes my wrist and drags me over to a couch with a table and control panel on it.<br>"Feed yourself," she says, indicating the panel, and reclines on the ivory couch as I arbitrarily punch buttons and receive a meal of fragrant, delicate greens that have been twisted into curlicues and light orange melon wrapped in fine pink strips of meat. I draw the plate closer to me, but don't touch it. I stare at Orlia Stock, waiting for her to speak.  
>She doesn't. Not for a while.<br>We sit and regard each other, burning holes in each other's clothing, sizing each other up. The red streaks in her shoulder-length yellow hair are driving me crazy.  
>"Well, love," Orlia says. "You clean up nice enough. I'm a great stylist. I can make you unforgettable. But that can only happen if you make an effort, too. My costumes will be branded on the brains of the Capitol's citizens. They always are. They can help to brand you there, too. But the attitude either has to be lost or modified. That's all I got for you."<br>I raise my eyebrows so high they nearly jump off my face.  
>"Very well," I say through loosely gritted teeth. I try not to grind them too much to preserve an air of civility, since Orlia Stock is only my stylist and not my true enemy. "Tell me what you've got for me."<br>Orlia's sparkling teeth flicker in the light of the room as she grins widely at my answer.

Another hour and I'm complete. Orlia is disproportionately pleased with herself, and I confess I'm not too put off either. Even the sound of Orlia complimenting herself all the way to the bottom level of the Remake Center.  
>I am dressed quite simply in a white shirt and trousers, and gloves. They fit snugly but are not skintight. The fabric by itself is a shimmering shade of white, which almost looks like I'm wearing glass. At my wrists, ankles, and collar are small projectors. My face is partially obscured by a mask, also with projectors, at my cheekbones.<br>Eleanor is dressed identically. She is striking in her plain white suit, with her long black hair cascading down her back in curled waves. Her mask, too, covers half her face, but her eyes still blaze unfettered.  
>Her stylist, Neet, a short, thin man with blue braids longer than my arm, hops up to her and adjusts her mask briefly. Then he and Orlia take out small remote controls and press buttons on them in unison.<br>Our suits come alive.  
>I watch as Eleanor raises her arms and gleaming jet-black feathers ripple up them. They bloom across her body and her face is transformed into the angles and highlights of a raven. When she moves, the illusion shifts, flickering between girl and bird.<br>I, on the other hand, am transfixed as glossy black fur pours along my limbs. My fingers are graced with long ivory claws. Orlia proudly holds up a mirror and I see my face shift between my own features and the liquid grace of a panther, with glistening whiskers and burning eyes.  
>We, the tributes of Five, have been completely transformed from humans to something in between, creatures both graceful and lethal. On their own, the suits would have flattered us, but nothing more. Now, with the holographic additions that represent our district's propensity for genetics and creation of animal hybrids, and our mercurial forms, flowing from tribute to animal and back again with every movement, will make us formidable. Unforgettable. Exquisite.<br>Sure, there are grander costumes at this unveiling. But none are as subtly powerful as ours.  
>"Be sure to move a lot," says Orlia, beaming at the effect she and Neet have created.<br>"Lots of waving," echoes Neet, "and turn to everybody." He grins, too.  
>"No, don't wave, you'll look stupid," Orlia reprimands Neet. "But do move a lot. Bow, if you want. When your chariot stops, fidget. If you're going to wave," she adds, eyeing the glare Neet is giving her, "make it regal."<br>"But stand absolutely still when you leave until the count of twenty," says Neet, and Orlia nods.  
>"Now, knock 'em out," she says, as we are cued to enter our chariot (white, pulled by grey horses) and the doors open to let in a deafening wave of sound which crashes over us. The horses don't react, but many of the tributes do, starting visibly in their chario ts.<br>District 1, with facets on their skin and jewels in their hair, leaves through the doors and is pulled through the ecstatic crowd. There is a full two minutes' pause between each chariot, and then it is Five's turn.  
>Eleanor stands stock still on my left in our chariot, not jostled by the progression of the horses as the street is so smooth and flawless. The Capitol crowd cheers as we pass, but the sound is subdued compared to the other districts' reception. Eleanor and I stand shoulder to shoulder, not moving, until my lips form the word "twenty" and as if we had planned it, we throw our arms up into the air. Our respective animals flash across our bodies and the crowd's shouts dwindle to murmurs as they wonder what they have just seen. I give a wave and turn to my right, and the panther sprays across my suit, causing my half of the crowd to give excited "oohs" and "aahs." Eleanor does something similar to the left, and when we both face forward again, the Capitol crowd lets loose a tremendous roar of appreciation. Apparently ravens and panthers are becoming quite popular in society anymore, or so Orlia told me, so once our suits have given up their secrets we are rather a hit.<br>Our grey, unfazed horses draw us up to the City Circle and halt before the mansion of President Snow, who each year reads a highly official welcome speech to the tributes. Ever since I was old enough for the mandatory viewing of the Hunger Games, or rather six Reapings old, I've thought of this speech as the "Welcome to Your Death" address. As such, I've always tuned it out. Every Reaping since I first saw it. This situation has not changed since then, even though now the Welcome to Your Death address is aimed at me. So I fidget like Orlia and Neet told me to and look at the other tributes.  
>District 1 still glitters, all faceted and bejeweled.<br>District 2 is dressed in a fashionable military getup, since 2 is where the Peacekeepers come from.  
>Districts 3, 6, and 7 are totally unremarkable. Four is bedecked in pearls and scales.<br>District 8 is clothed in fabric of a nearly impossible weave. I have to look away, before I go crosseyed, over to 9, whose tributes are all over green. Clothes, skin, hair, everything.  
>District 10, I decide not to remember. Their costume is so bland.<br>District 11 is brown, to represent their wheat. It is actually quite beautiful, as their stylists have captured the effect of wheat fields in wind.  
>District 12 have the great misfortune to be dressed in stylized miners' outfits, with colossal head lamps, and great big coal bags under their eyes.<br>And President Snow has his signature rose stuffed daintily into his lapel. The man never changes. Always, every Reaping, he's got the same white, red-tinged rose in his lapel.  
>At the conclusion of his speech, the chariots turn 'round the Circle before vanishing into the Training Center. Upon alighting from our chariot, I am immediately accosted by Orlia, who is beside herself with pride.<br>"You were ibrilliant/i in my costume!" she cries, her sparkling teeth throwing off bits of light as she grins from ear to ear. "I told you I could make you unforgettable. I'm so pleased you didn't ruin it with your bad attitude!"  
>My face settles into the most terrifying expression I think I've ever used at this last, and as I turn to better focus its intensity on my egregious stylist my suit comes alive again, adding a panther's fluid ferocity to my anger. But Orlia is unperturbed.<br>"You're going to be grand at your interview!" she cries, and, giving me a congratulatory pat on the shoulder, strides away into the Training Center. The last thing I hear is her muttering about the upcoming interviews.  
>I glare after her, but at the same time feel a wave of unwitting gratefulness well up as I think about the advantage Orlia has inadvertently given me. I am, in effect, a panther. I am not to be trifled with.<br>I have been given a chance to provide Five with a victor.


	6. Chapter 6

RE-INVIGORATION PENDING, HOLD ON TO YOUR HATS


End file.
